The Airport Delay

[luciennepoor]

I hate flying.

Not the being-in-the-air part. That I can handle. It's everything before it. The lines. The security where you have to decide if your deodorant counts as a liquid. The gates that change three times before boarding. The fluorescent lights that make everyone look like they haven't slept in a week.

My flight to Phoenix was supposed to leave at 2:15 PM. By 4:00, we still hadn't boarded. The screen at the gate kept flashing DELAYED in that cheerful blue font, like it was doing me a favor. The announcement came at 4:30. Mechanical issue. Next update in two hours. They handed out vouchers for a sandwich and a small drink, which felt like being paid off for a crime I didn't commit.

I found a corner near an unused gate. The kind of spot where the carpet is worn thin and nobody bothers you because nobody can see you. I had my carry-on, my backpack, and five hours to kill before anyone was going to tell me anything useful.

I pulled out my laptop. The airport Wi-Fi was free but slow. I tried to log into my email. Spinning wheel. Tried to load a streaming site. Spinning wheel. Tried to open a news page. More spinning. I was about to give up and just stare at the wall like everyone else when I remembered a site a coworker had mentioned during a slow day at the office.

I typed it in more out of boredom than intention. The page loaded faster than anything else had all afternoon. Clean interface. No buffering. It was like the airport Wi-Fi had decided this one site was allowed to work.

I stared at the screen for a minute. I wasn't a gambler. I'd played poker maybe three times in my life, all at friend's apartments with chips that were mostly dust and beer stains. But I had time. A lot of time. And the sandwich voucher had bought me a turkey club and a bag of chips that I'd already finished.

I deposited forty dollars. That was the number in my head. Forty. Two fancy coffees. One dinner I didn't cook. The cost of not losing my mind in an airport terminal for five hours.

The Vavada slot casino section caught my eye. Not because I knew anything about slots. I didn't. But because it looked simple. No complicated rules. No other players to embarrass myself in front of. Just me, the screen, and a button that said spin.

I picked a game that looked like something my grandmother would have played. Cherries. Bells. Lucky sevens. The kind of thing you see in old movies where someone pulls a lever and coins pour out. I set the bet to fifty cents and pressed spin.

I lost the first ten spins. Five dollars gone in about ninety seconds.

I shrugged. That was the budget. I was paying for entertainment. Same as buying a drink at the airport bar, except I didn't have to make small talk with a stranger.

I kept spinning. Lost another two dollars. Then something happened. The screen flashed. The little icons lined up in a way they hadn't before. A row of bells. My balance jumped from thirty-three dollars to seventy-eight.

I sat up straighter in my terrible airport chair.

I didn't get excited. I'd heard the stories. You win a little, you get confident, you lose it all. I'd watched my uncle do that at a casino in Atlantic City when I was fifteen. He'd been up three hundred dollars. He left with nothing and a long face that my aunt didn't talk to for the rest of the weekend.

I kept spinning. Same bet. Fifty cents. Nothing fancy.

I won again. Not a big win. Just a small one. Fifteen dollars. Then another. Then I lost five spins in a row and dropped back to sixty.

This went on for an hour. The balance moved like a heart monitor. Up, down, up, down. I wasn't winning big. I wasn't losing big. I was just… playing. Passing time. Letting the rhythm of the spins fill the silence of the empty gate.

Then the screen went crazy.

I don't know what I hit. Some combination I'd never seen before. The game exploded in animation—gold coins, flashing lights, a sound effect that made a woman across the concourse look up from her book. The counter started ticking. Fifty dollars. A hundred. Two hundred.

It stopped at four hundred and thirty dollars.

I stared at the screen. My hands were actually shaking. I checked the time. 6:15 PM. Still no announcement about the flight. Still stuck in this fluorescent-lit purgatory.

I looked at the cash-out button for a long time. My finger was on the trackpad. But I didn't click. I took a breath. Stood up. Walked to the bathroom. Splashed water on my face. Looked at myself in the mirror like I was in a movie about a guy who needed to make a decision.

I went back to my corner. I cashed out. All of it.

The withdrawal confirmation popped up. I closed the laptop. Leaned back in my chair. Ate the last chip from my sandwich bag.

The flight finally boarded at 9:00 PM. I was in a middle seat between a man who fell asleep before takeoff and a teenager watching videos without headphones. I didn't care. I had four hundred and thirty dollars coming to my account. Enough to cover the rental car I'd booked for Phoenix. Enough to take my mom out for a nice dinner when I got there. Enough to turn a terrible travel day into a story I'd actually want to tell.

I don't normally play slots. I don't normally gamble at all. But that day, in that airport, with those terrible lights and that terrible delay, something worked. The Vavada slot casino was there when nothing else was. Not as a solution to anything. Just as a way to pass the time that turned into something more.

I still have the account. I check it sometimes when I'm stuck somewhere. Not because I expect to win. Because I remember how it felt to be in that empty gate, watching the balance climb, knowing that for once, the delay worked in my favor.

The flight was late. But so was my luck. And sometimes, late is better than never.